Intelligent design goes Ivy League: Cornell offers course despite president denouncing theory

WorldNetDaily.com ^ | 04/11/2006

[SirLinksalot]

Intelligent design goes Ivy League

Cornell offers course despite president denouncing theory

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Posted: April 11, 2006 1:00 a.m. Eastern

© 2006 WorldNetDaily.com

Cornell University plans to offer a course this summer on intelligent design, using textbooks by leading proponents of the controversial theory of origins.

The Ivy League school's course – "Evolution and Design: Is There Purpose in Nature?" – aims to "sort out the various issues at play, and to come to clarity on how those issues can be integrated into the perspective of the natural sciences as a whole."

The announcement comes just half a year after Cornell President Hunter Rawlings III denounced intelligent design as a "religious belief masquerading as a secular idea."

Proponents of intelligent design say it draws on recent discoveries in physics, biochemistry and related disciplines that indicate some features of the natural world are best explained as the product of an intelligent cause rather than an undirected process such as natural selection. Supporters include scientists at numerous universities and science organizations worldwide.

Taught by senior lecturer Allen MacNeill of the Ecology and Evolutionary Biology department, Cornell's four-credit seminar course will use books such as "Debating Design," by William Dembski and Michael Ruse; and "Darwin's Black Box," by Michael Behe.

The university's Intelligent Design Evolution Awareness club said that while it's been on the opposite side of MacNeill in many debates, it has appreciated his "commitment to the ideal of the university as a free market-place of ideas."

"We have found him always ready to go out of his way to encourage diversity of thought, and his former students speak highly of his fairness," the group said. "We look forward to a course where careful examination of the issues and critical thinking is encouraged."

Intelligent design has been virtually shut out of public high schools across the nation. In December, U.S. District Judge John E. Jones' gave a stinging rebuke to a Dover, Pa., school board policy that required students of a ninth-grade biology class to hear a one-minute statement that says evolution is a theory, and intelligent design "is an explanation of the origin of life that differs from Darwin's view."

Jones determined Dover board members violated the U.S. Constitution's ban on congressional establishment of religion and charged that several members lied to cover their motives even while professing religious beliefs.

"The citizens of the Dover area were poorly served by the members of the Board who voted for the ID Policy," Jones wrote. "It is ironic that several of these individuals, who so staunchly and proudly touted their religious convictions in public, would time and again lie to cover their tracks and disguise the real purpose behind the ID Policy."

[AndrewC]

In philosophy, there is no "wrong" answer. In science, there is.

Bull. In science there are observations, and there are "falsified" theories(explanations for the observations). All else is tentative.

[Coyoteman]

I didn't realize that science between countries is a competition.

You should realize it.

The Chinese trained many of their best scientists here, now they are graduating many times the number of scientists we are. That begins to add up quickly, especially when we transfer our head start overseas as well.

But don't worry, we still have more lawyers and advertising execs.

[Do you see why some of us take science education and rational thought very seriously now?]

[Coyoteman]

"falsified" theories = wrong answers?

[orionblamblam]

> If no one believes it, then what purpose does it serve other than to denigrate the intelligence of those who believe in a Creator, Designer, Maker, Source of intelligence, or so on?

It's brought up by True Believers In YEC as a strawman arguement agaisn those of us who understand the facts regarding evolution. *WHERE* do you see anyone suggesting that belief in some god or other is automatically stupid? What you see is people who believe that replacing the understood with Mystery is stupid. What would you say to someone who didn't understand the internal combustion engine and who therefore concludes that magical elves make the cars go?

> I am asking you to defend your philosophical belief that life could not have been designed

Another strawman. Please debate honestly, please.

[orionblamblam]

> there are "falsified" theories

As I said: Wrong Answers. The Humours Theory of Disease, the Phrenology Theory of Psychology, the Goddidit Theory of Absolutely Everything That Ever Happens Ever, the Communists Were Darwinists Theory, The Theory That Even Thought Hitler Believed That Man Was Created Perfect And Did Not Evolve From Lower Forms He Nevertheless Wasn't A Creationist... these are all disproven theories. Wrong Answers.

[jec41]

Can you name another category of causation besides necessity, chance, and agency?

Unknown is the category. It is the philosophical argument for faith and belief in things unknown.

[jec41]

That is a lie. Evolutionists dropped that claim when the scientific evidence clearly established, even to evolutionists, that the whole primordial soup idea was impossible.

Please state the theory of the oirgin of life by science.

[jec41]

I suggest people check out the discussion on Telic Thoughts.

This guy is simply saying you can bring your belief to class but you are going to have to provide evidence. They will have to adhere to the method of science and every belief will be challenged and refuted.

[Reily]

"Take global warming. The real debate is how much is human caused and whether there is proof we can effect global temperatures. But there are conservatives arguing that global warming itself is fake... and frankly that is such an ignorant position (as the numbers are really clear) that they get dismissed by the scientific community.
"
There is global warming because there has been in the past. However its all natural.
The earth's climatic temperatures are almost completely a product of solar activity. Any notion that man has contributed much to the problem is pure bull ! For example Mt Saint Helena's put more CO,CO2, sulfur, etc as well as a heavy metals into the atmosphere then the entire industrial history of mankind ! Any good volcanic eruption does likewise !
Have you ever actually taken a course in atmospheric physics ? If you have I suggest you also take a course or do some reading in paleoclimatology. Two other important contributors to long term climate change are the precession of the earth's axis & variations in the earth's magnetic field. In the past the field has faded, flipped and zeroed-out. The extra contribution to the climate energy budget from the solar wind that would make it to earth has hardly been considered and is certainly NOT in any of the major climate computer models. Earth axis precession is NOT in any of the models. Some of the models that started this 'sky-is-falling' notion assumed a smooth earth !Another feature that is no considered in ANY climate models is the fact that the earth's surface is dynamic, continental drift, sub-ocean vulcanism & slides change ocean current sometimes quickly and dramatically. Again none of this is in any of the global warming models. The global warming crowd has many of the same faces as the 'Ice Age is coming crowd' that I remember from my readings in my meteorology courses I took in college back in the late 1970s. Some of the same global warming modelers were involved in the TAPS Nuclear Winter model that was hyped to try and stop Reagan from deploying the Pershing IIs to Europe back in the 1980's. A version of that model was used (I remember the Carl Sagan opinion piece !) to try argue that we should not go into Iraq in 1991 because Saddam would set fire to his oil fields and it would take decades to put out 'yadda yadda' and we would have a nuclear winter from the soot. The late Red Adair's company put out all the fires in 6 months or so. I don't remember any glaciers in my backyard that year !

[gondramB]

"Have you ever actually taken a course in atmospheric physics ?"

Atmospheric dynamics, actually, although I have a degree in physics...

But that's not the point. You are discussing whether global warming is human caused - that is right question. Many people link global warming and human causation automatically or they deny that the surface temperature has risen this century.

I have a number of concerns about whether human causation could be the dominant factor in global warming but that's another thread.

[gondramB]

"
Do you actually mean to say that we will fall technologically behind the Chinese? Do you rationally hold that questioning totally naturalistic explanations is somehow going to put us behind the Chinese in technology? If that is so, you are IMO mistaken and indulging in needless worry expressed in hyperbole."

Not this year. Nor next year. But over time if they keep outproducing us economically and their share of quality PhD.s continues to increase while ours decreases then yes, it will happen.

Teaching things other than science in science classes and cutting research budgets are major factors but by no means the only factors.

[AndrewC]

"falsified" theories = wrong answers?

Maybe, but that falls under the tentative.

[Sola Veritas]

"The Chinese trained many of their best scientists here, now they are graduating many times the number of scientists we are. That begins to add up quickly, especially when we transfer our head start overseas as well."

If you mean they will have more engineers, chemists, physists, then I might agree it is cause for concern. However, the possibility that the Chinese will have more biologists trained in TOE is not a cause for concern. Holding to the TOE is not going to give the Chinese, or us, military supremacy or technological supremacy - it just isn't that important.

The only advantage the Chinese have over us are sheer numbers, and more individual drive because they are a "hungry" people. Whereas Americans have become lazy. This has nothing to due with one's views on TOE.

[Reily]

I have degrees in physics & geophysics also.
I absolutely don't buy into the notion that human activity can do any more then local changes, even then it is hardly permanent. The sun does it all ! Where the sun goes we go ! The second main contributor is the dynamic earth.

[AndrewC]

As I said: Wrong Answers.

Nope. Tentative.(as many Darwinians attest, proof(or disproof) is not what science is about.)

[Boiler Plate]

I'm sorry, let me clarify this for you. You made an assertion that science is to be damaged.

Just how does ID damage science?

[gondramB]

"I absolutely don't buy into the notion that human activity can do any more then local changes, even then it is hardly permanent. The sun does it all ! Where the sun goes we go ! The second main contributor is the dynamic earth."

My position is that I don't know.

I understand that CO2 levels have some historical correlation with surface temperature but here is a graph that shows a major problem with CO2 being the currently controlling factor.

Look at the data from 1945 to 1976. The temperature is basically flat with random fluctuations and yet this was a time of great industrialization and CO2 increase.

[gondramB]

"
Just how does ID damage science?"

ID doesn't damage science. People believing in ID doesn't damage science. Pressure to teach things in science class other than the best available science hurts science education which in turns hurts science. It sends the message to new generations of students that science is decided by school boards, societal pressure and faith.

[AndrewC]

http://www.tigtail.org/L_View/TIG/TVM/E/PreHistory/Europe/prehistory-europe.html

About a 1000 centuries ago they must have had some real gas guzzlers.

[AndrewC]

It sends the message to new generations of students that science is decided by school boards, societal pressure and faith.

No it doesn't. It sends the message that free people get to decide what they teach their children.